Written by Robbie Young

Robbie Young has his doctorate degree in education and is interested in philosophy, history, politics, and contemporary cultural issues. He studied under Brendan Purcell at the University of Dublin and is currently a cultural attaché in the Apostolic Nunciature in Pretoria, South Africa.

In his writings Voegelin makes several references to Sigmund Freud, but he never engaged in the type of sustained philosophical analysis that he carried out with figures like Hegel, Marx, or Nietzsche. However, he did make enough comments to make it clear that he regarded Freud as falling within the same cultural matrix that produced the revolutionary figures of the…

The Black SunIn an essay he wrote entitled: Atheism and Monotheism Jean-Luc Nancy used the metaphor of the “black sun” to describe atheism. He writes: “The day will perhaps come, and perhaps it is not even so far away, when we shall characterize all contemporary thinking as a slow and heavy gravitational movement around the black sun of atheism.”[1] Nancy…

Then every thing includes itself in power,Power into will, will into appetite;And appetite, a universal wolf,So doubly seconded with will and power,Must make perforce a universal prey,And last eat up himself.– Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 1, Scene 3[i]

Living in the era of the Tudors, Shakespeare knew a thing or two about power, will and appetite. It can be a…